I'm essentially a fractional operating exec managing five different small businesses. I am overseeing all aspects of these business hence a lot of opportunities across various functions (engineering, HR, procurement, manufacturing, sales) to try out opportunities to utilize AI tools. I would say have been using Chat GPT paid version for about 4 months now in a work environment and the usage, including customized GPTs, has really picked up steam in the past two months. I have it open all the time and use it DAILY for various tasks. I think small business are perfect for this as they may not have the system /people strength that the larger corps have.

Here are some real world examples that we deployed over the past few weeks that are saving us considerable time and money....once again not huge teams making this happen, literally one person with the right prompting and identifying how to use the technology to improve workflow and cut time/expense.

- Customized Chat GPT for contract/T&Cs review. Now with the click of the button I am now getting redlined contracts ready for my review and submission back to clients. Key risk inputs (e.g. warranty terms, payment terms liability limits, liquidated damages, etc I provide "standard guidance" which is where the GPT starts from). At prior companies this would be dedicated contract resource and legal review. Took me about a day to get the GPT working and now I use this weekly and just continue to refine over time. When I got it working I seriously had an ah-ha moment....after reviewing contracts for years and years in various capacities this is a complete game changer for me.

- Two weeks ago we redesigned our logo, in the past we would have had some external graphics person do this. Now my sales director and I refine through prompts until we got exactly what we want in about an hour.

- Purchase Agreement - did a small company acquisition purchase agreement based on a prior deal we had done. Zero legal review, assessed risk and reworked the entire agreement as required via GPT conversation. I am sure a lawyer is reading this and saying we are dumbasses but we felt the risk was acceptable and went with it.

- Completely automated a manual process for getting quotes for bid processes. I essentially increased the productivity of one buyer overnight once we got this working, literally one buyer can do a 10 fold increase in work from this one workflow. We do not have any onboard coding/IT guys...we were able to do what we need with a GPT.

- GPT for P&L analysis (I have to manage 5 of them), gives me executive level insights with a click of the button.

- Just had a discussion today with my purchasing manager where she takes data out of our ERP, essentially massages it in excel, and reports our her weekly KPIs. Had her come in my office, setup a GPT and this now takes 10 seconds with a native PDF out of our ERP. So instead of spending time on getting the KPI data, she can now focus on what it is telling her and manage accordingly.

I could go on and on....seriously if any small business owners are wondering how to leverage this NOW and need help please reach out to me. My general observation is a majority of people have no clue what this can do for them in the work environment or just flat out aren't using it, and my second observation is at some point our productivity as a society will take a leap frog from where we are today. Invest accordingly.

Forgot to add, primarily using Chat GPT Business plan.

You have way more trust AI than I do and it has a long way to go to change my mind.

I have to use Copilot, but I think this is how I can work around the various websites that my company has blocked.

I needed to compare two (kind of obscure) chemical substances. I was trying to get the SDSes, but the only two websites that came up for one of the products were blocked by our IT.

I asked Copilot to compare product X to product Y, and it gave me a very useful answer that was based on the physical properties (which I couldn't access through a Google search because of our firewall).

This is definitely something I hadn't thought about but is very useful to me.l because it's not unusual for me to hit firewalls when doing searches.

In a pinch when a contractor fell through on his part of an implementation project, I used co-pilot one night to write a python script to take an export file from one piece of software and prep it for upload into our accounting software. We are a small business. Obviously, need to eventually pay some cash to get it all completed via some backend process, but it has been working for us over the past few months with minimal effort from the office staff.

NoahAg said:

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I'm late to the game on this, and just started using it for easy work stuff. Drafting certain emails, letters. Have also started using it as my "google" a bit. My boss is more of a caveman than me when it comes to AI.

I'm not in a "technical" field like engineering, coding, etc. More relational, relaying info between consultants and trying to push them along to get projects done. I'm sure there's a lot more I could be doing with it, both at work and with personal finances.

Just looking for ideas...

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check out CLAUDE

it is better than CHATGPT for actual work products

I also just use it for advanced questions like a "google plus" but tried it to help with building a Bibliography for my book- which it could not do (the italics would not transfer)

Used Gemini to help write Mom's eulogy. I put in the basic stuff I wanted to talk about and where she was born, etc. It gave me some really good ideas that I incorporated.

When she was a little girl there was a German POW camp in Georgia the next town over. That reminded me that she told me she remembered seeing them working the fields. Helped me verify dates and locations, etc..

Latest claude release changed my entire perspective on AI and I've played around with them all.

The rate of acceleration is truly mind boggling. I suggest everyone start playing around with them all. It's here to stay.